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Disclaimer: Nansen has produced the following report as part of its existing contract for services provided to Fantom at the time of publication. While Fantom has the right to review and provide feedback to Nansen, Nansen maintains full editorial control over the publication of this report. All views expressed are the independent opinions of Nansen's research analyst(s) who are the author(s) named in this report. This report is intended for informational purposes only and does not serve as investment, financial, professional, or other advice. For more information, please refer to the disclaimer at the end of this report, as well as our Terms of Service.
Overview
Fantom is an EVM-compatible smart contract blockchain platform with a unique consensus mechanism called Lachesis. Due to Lachesis’ asynchronous and Byzantine Fault-Tolerant nature, the applications within Fantom have fast finality, high-throughput, and bank-grade security. You can check out Nansen’s previous report on Fantom here.
The combination of low fees, ease of development, and fast transactions started an adoption boom in September 2021. In this quarter, the challenges presented by the market conditions had caused a steady decline in Fantom’s user activity, particularly the UST-LUNA collapse saga and the interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve. Despite these challenges, Fantom moved forward by rolling out network improvements and various app integrations.
Fantom Ecosystem
Fantom’s compatibility with EVM helps developers to quickly port their existing Ethereum-based dApps on Fantom Opera mainnet, which will substantially upgrade the dApps’ performance and lower the costs. In Q2 2022, Fantom continued to boast a thriving ecosystem of dApps such as Automated Market Maker SpookySwap, Balancer fork Beethoven X, and even games such as Andre Cronje’s Rarity, which still draws gamers on a daily basis and boasts ~95k transactions in Q2.
Key Developments: Q2
SnapSync Rollout
- SnapSync went live in mid-May, this update allows new nodes to join the network faster. On testnet, the syncing time could be reduced from 24 hours to 7 hours.
- Snapsync is built on the “Lachesis Light Repeater” (LLR), a variation on Fantom’s Lachesis consensus mechanism. The LLR stores the minimal required information from the chain to allow lightweight stateless syncing.
- This update, along with protocol-wide improvements, caused gas prices to decrease considerably.
- Snapsync implementation further improved the decentralization of Fantom by allowing nodes to generate and validate Genesis files.
fWallet V2 Release
- Fantom released V2 of their native wallet, fWallet, at the end of April.
- Notable changes include modernized UI, ability to view and manage Fantom ecosystem tokens, simplified on-chain governance voting, in-wallet swap, bridge, and redesigned staking interface.
- Additional functionalities are set to be released at a later date, such as an NFT browser.
Integrations with Fantom
- More wallets started to integrate with Fantom, such as Zerion, Trust Wallet and Crypto.com DeFi Wallet.
- Blockchain data indexing protocol Unmarshal integrated with Fantom.
- Node-as-a-Service provider Apex built the first fully-insured bridge from Avalanche to Fantom.
- Protocols such as WooFi and 1inch can now be used on Fantom.
Nansen Data
Daily Transactions
In the chart above, the daily transactions fluctuated between 500k-1.1m transactions per day. The transactions showed a slight decrease until early May and increased significantly in mid-May, during the aftermath of the UST de-pegging event and LUNA collapse. In June, the daily transactions stabilized considerably.
The amount of gas paid decreased significantly after SnapSync and protocol improvements rolled out in mid-May, except for the lower spike around mid-June. Typical gas fees on Fantom are now less than $0.30 for smart contracts and less than $0.10 for token transfers between wallets. Along with fast Time to Finality (TTF), Fantom can thrive as a popular DeFi hub for investors and traders.
Daily Active Addresses
In Q2 2022, the chart above shows that from the end of April there was a downward trend in addresses that were actively using Fantom, from the 60-80k range to the 50-65k range. This could be due to the market downturn in crypto that has been happening since May.
Daily Gas Paid vs Ethereum
In Q2 2022, the gas paid in Fantom was much lower than on Ethereum, especially after the protocol improvements that happened in mid-May. A spike in gas fees occurred on Fantom on May 11, 2022 totaling up to $450k, which was attributed to MEV bot trades. A similar spike in Ethereum gas happened on May 1, 2022, where it shot up to $220m, driven by the sale of Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs.
Daily Transactions vs Ethereum
Ethereum led the transaction count over Fantom throughout Q2 2022, except for the end of this period, where the transaction counts were similar between these two chains. There were 2 days where Fantom had slightly more transactions, May 23, 2022 and Jun 26, 2022. On both dates, we discovered that the rise in activity was attributed to MEV bot arbitrage trades and WSPP airdrop.
Stablecoins: Volume
The graph above shows the daily on-chain volume for USDT, DAI, and USDC on Fantom. USDC daily volume went above $1b around the end of April and mid-May, before lowering towards the end of June. USDT and DAI showed a very similar trend throughout the quarter. Although there was no big difference in the volume at the beginning of the quarter, the gap between USDC and the other two stablecoins from mid-May onwards showed that Fantom users preferred conducting their transactions using USDC.
Stablecoins: Daily Active Senders
On the chart above, USDC daily active senders showed a downward trend as the quarter progressed. DAI and USDT also showed similar patterns, although not as significant. USDT had the lowest daily active senders compared to USDC and DAI. In line with the volume, USDC had the most active senders throughout this quarter, which confirmed it as the most preferred stablecoin on Fantom.
Ethereum Smart Money on Fantom
The chart above shows a breakdown of the Smart Money addresses that are active on Fantom. They have been categorized based on the type of Smart Money. Kindly refer to this link for the specific definitions. The proportion had not changed from the last quarter, as the type of Smart Money attracted by Fantom remained predominantly First Mover Stakers and First Mover LPs, who are the fastest addresses to enter staking and liquidity pools. This was in line with the fact that Fantom’s most popular products were DeFi protocols.
Fantom Multichain Bridge
The graph above shows the daily volume of the Fantom Multichain bridge. The volume was relatively volatile throughout Q2 2022, showing several peaks above $18m. The volume seemed to be lowering in June, with the highest peak just above $10m.
Top Users by Entity
In the table above, the entity that attracted the most users in Q2 2022 was SpookySwap, the most popular AMM in the chain. The new popular entity was Tomb Finance and one of its products, TombSwap. Tomb Finance is a protocol where users can provide liquidity for the growth of the Fantom Opera ecosystem. Do note that the “Unknown” entity refers to the sum of all entities that are not yet labeled in Nansen, rather than a single unknown entity.
Conclusion
Fantom’s growth stabilized in this quarter, as there was no single protocol that drove hyper-growth like Solidly in Q1 2022. Besides that, the general market downturn in crypto might have lowered users’ enthusiasm and impacted the growth of Fantom. Nevertheless, Fantom’s effort in making improvements to the protocol this quarter started to show tangible results via lower gas fees and faster transaction finality. In the next quarter, users may find it more beneficial to utilize Fantom’s low gas fees and fast transactions, as well as the wider range of products integrated with Fantom.